"I enjoy inventing things out of fun. After all, life is a game, not a career."

Brion Gysin and William Burroughswith the Dream Machine....

"A dreamachine is "viewed" with the eyes closed: the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve and alters the brain's electrical oscillations. The "viewer" experiences increasingly bright, complex patterns of color behind their closed eyelids. The patterns become shapes and symbols, swirling around, until the "viewer" feels surrounded by colors. It is claimed that viewing a dreamachine allows one to enter a hypnagogic state.

This experience may sometimes be quite intense, but to escape from it, one needs only to open one's eyes."

close your eyes....

"In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second.

Brion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire. He is best known for his rediscovery of the cut-up technique, used by William S. Burroughs. With Ian Somerville he invented the Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed. It was in painting, however, that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts, creating calligraphic works inspired by Japanese andArabic scripts.

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Burroughs later stated that"Brion Gysin was the only man I ever respected."

David John is co-founder of DISC Interiors in Los Angeles. This is his personal journal, a collection of conversations with friends, makers, and artists, as well as his photographs. You Have Been Here Sometime. Feel free to contact:david ( at ) discinteriors.com